“Tokyo is not going to cry loud the memories that it contains within itself. ‘Reorganize the unorganised noises (what you think you hear is not what you hear) of a street, a railroad station, an airport… Play them back one by one in silence, and adjust the blend.’ That’s what Robert Bresson says. The point is not to retell or recompose the story of the ‘unorganized noises,’ but to incoherently connect the incoherent cityscape; it’s not to create a fusion but a confusion. Rails turning red from the water from a rusty sewer pipe; the detritus of machines; concrete walls with steel rods sticking out of them; the electric wires all over a building site. ‘Clean air will kill me,’ that’s what Syd Vicious said. Even if it tries to see its past as a romantic dream, Tokyo has in fact completely forgotten its past. It can only live in the present, live it intensely. Photographs expose the surplus of Tokyo like a broken dam pouring into every corner.” — Osamu Kanemura

Taken from ‘The City, The Body and the Image’ – Déjà-vu, No.18 Autumn 1994